Grasping an object comfortably: orientation information is held in memory

It has been shown that memorized information can influence real-time visuomotor control. For instance, a previously seen object (prime) influences grasping movements toward a target object. In this study, we examined how general the priming effect is: does it depend on the orientation of the target object and the similarity between the prime and the target? To do so, we examined whether priming effects occured for different orientations of the prime and the target objects and for primes that were either identical to the target object or only half of the target object. We found that for orientations of the target object that did not require an awkward grasp, the orientation of the prime could influence the initiation time and the final grip orientation. The priming effects on initiation time were only found when the whole target object was presented as prime, but not when only half of the target object was presented. The results suggest that a memory effect on real-time control is constrained by end-state comfort and by the relevance of the prime for the grasping movement, which might mean that the interactions between the ventral and dorsal pathways are task specific.